I get what he’s saying — that Democrats will use defunding to blame for its ultimate failure — but put me down as resolutely against Charles Krauthammer’s gambit. That gambit is, Republicans should fund ObamaCare, watch it fail, and then kill it.

A question arises, though: Just how long should they wait? The Great Society/War on Poverty programs are both massive liberal failures. Lack of funding has never been their problem, they’re just bad policies. But decade after decade, they keep getting funded because, once implemented, they took root. Today there’s no meaningful constituency for ending those policies.

ObamaCare could reasonably be expected to do two things if it’s funded. One, bad policy or not, it will take root and create dependencies. And two, it will grow, get bigger, take over more of the health care system, force more insurers out, encourage more and more doctors to retire, etc., to the point that it has effectively become so entrenched that it can’t be killed off without significant pain for the American people. The Democrats have openly banked on both occurring, so that they will have the excuse to expand it so that it becomes a single payer system. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to this guy.

> There is another aspect to implementing ObamaCare that Dr. K leaves out, but bears mentioning, and that is its expected impact on the states. Texas alone has estimated that ObamaCare will saddle it with $27 billion in expenses which aren’t currently accounted for. The Heritage Foundation says that ObamaCare amounts to a “fiscal timebomb” that threatens state budgets all over the country.

For Mississippi, Milliman estimates that between 206,000 and 415,000 people will be added to Medicaid, with a 10-year impact on the state budget of between $858 million and $1.66 billion. The seven-year cost of the Medicaid expansion in Indiana is estimated to be between $2.59 billion and $3.11 billion, with 388,000 to 522,000 people joining the state’s Medicaid rolls. Finally, Milliman estimates that Obamacare will result in nearly one of five Nebraskans being covered by Medicaid at a cost of $526 million to $766 million over the next decade.

So there is a great deal more than just the retail politics and the optics to consider here. ObamaCare threatens to crush state budgets, in a time when many states are already struggling and several, such as California, are flirting with bankruptcy. Texas is considering dropping out of Medicaid just to fight off the ObamaCare threat.

And then, there’s the politics. If the Republicans rode to victory in 2010 on a message of thwarting Obama and his big government agenda, only to play games with ObamaCare in 2011 in ways that may allow his signature legislation to stand, they’re toast. There will be a third party, and it will come from an angle that hurts Republicans and empowers Democrats. Bank on it.

Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.

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1.
Sarajo

Kill Obamacare….of course they will blame GOP regardless of outcome….but at least it will be dead and Congress can start over! This current plan will destroy our healthcare system and cripple State & Fed budgets

Charles Krauthammer studied at Harvard University. He is often confused concerning economic matters. Infatuation with big government remedies is virtually the norm for that particular cultural and social milieu. Krauthammer is also a guilt tripped white dude who feels very uncomfortable opposing a dark skinned president. Any objective and rational person should easily realize that Barack Obama is an intellectual mediocrity. He is also a very nasty guy comparable to the revengeful Richard M. Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson. At the end of the day, Krauthammer wants to continue being invited to the cocktail parties of the “elites” and perceived as enlightened and forward thinking.

Bryan Preston is right on target in pointing out that failed government programs rarely disappear. Too many politicians and bureaucrats are heavily invested in their perpetuation unto the end of time. Tea Party members must push for the extinction of the Health Care law as quickly as possible. The longer we procrastinate—-the worst the situation gets. Race guilt is also the number one reason why Obama still has a decent chance of getting reelected. I have long argued that his Rasmussen daily tracking poll numbers may never get under 40%. They should, by all rights, be no higher than the high 20s or low 30s.

“Krauthammer is also a guilt tripped white dude who feels very uncomfortable opposing a dark skinned president.”

David, I always enjoy reading your comments, but I feel it should be noted that Charles has figuratively kicked the dark-skinned, half-white arxx of that President on many, many occasions on the pages of the Wapo and other places. Therefore, I haven’t noticed the discomfort you mention. BTW I don’t agree with Charles on this repeal or defund matter. I also agree that sometimes Charles thinks like a DC insider. Overall, though, I am a big fan of most of his efforts. To me he is a great asset to the editorial profession.

I am going to stick with my opinion. Charles Krauthammer is still a Harvard guy—and these people often feel obligated to go out of their way to say something nice about Barack Obama. And yes, I adamantly believe this is based on race guilt. Furthermore, Krauthammer is making a total fool of himself. The evidence is beyond serious discussion that government entitlement programs do not disappear once it becomes obvious they are senseless. On the contrary, they rarely, if ever, are shut down. What is Krauthammer smoking?

Harvard people need to learn that they are expected to earn what they get in life. It is getting ridiculous. Krauthammer should be the butt of jokes. The man deserves to be roundly ridiculed for his naiveté.

Better that than being paralyzed from the neck up, as per the Head Demonrats!
krauthammer is a thinker; not a doer. Obumacare will put a really big dent in the economy. lets eliminate it up front and save lots of bucks.

Well, CK is overthinking this one. It’s borderline insane for too many reasons to list. Probably the main one, other than the take root idea already discussed, is that the damn thing will be an abject failure but it will still be portrayed 24x7x365 as the greatest thing since the coming of Jesus. The slimebags in the media will focus on the 1 in 1000 success stories, while thousands of people die of neglect.

ObamaCare is toxic to the existing health care system and the longer it is allowed to exist, the more difficult it will be to restore any symbolance of a market in which patients and doctors may function. So too, the Tea Party candidates having run at least in part on the overwhelming revulsion at this scheme to subordinate medical care to political control, would be seen as, at best, ineffectual for not trying to defund. Charels Krauthammer is a valuable voice on the right, to be listened to and considered, but in this case, not agreed with.

You’re legally armed with a pistol, and you’ve been trained to use it. You’re walking down a crowded sidewalk, when some maniac kicks his way out of the crowd on the other side of the street wielding a large sword. He starts heading toward a group of defenseless women, children, and elderly on your side of the street with his sword held above his head. You have a clear shot…

Do you:
a. Shoot him?
b. Figure that the people he’s headed for might have a taste for martyrdom, and that a couple of whacks and slashes would disabuse them of that notion?

It’s not like Obamacare has ever had majority support. There are millions of people who are going to have Obamacare run amok through them who never wanted it, wrote their congressmen, held up signs, or just stayed silent. I can’t believe that CK could be so callous as to suggest that people need to “get a taste of how bad it’s going to be” so they’ll reject it better — this is healthcare, many of those who taste this poison will die from it.

We CANNOT allow ObaMarxCare to be funded because when it starts out, they will put all the resources that they possibly can into it. They will tax for a few years before the handouts even start, so at first the coffers will be full enough to provide a Potemkin Village of health care competency. But in the end, it will descend into the normal government incompetence.

We simply can’t wait for the inevitable failure, as Dr. K suggests. By then, the bureaucracy will have its tentacles into everything and the free market elements that are allowed to exist will be so damaged that it will make it even harder to go back.

If the Republicans kill the “Health Control” law they get the credit not blame. It was part of the Party campaign platform after all. The problem is that it can’t be defunded completely without defunding the Dept. of HHS. So why exactly do we need a Dept. of Health and Human Services?

Just another unconstitutional program that should never have seen the light of day. Abolish and repeal. Kill all the unconstitutional programs, departments etc. Put the federal government back to doing what it’s supposed to do, defending our borders and protecting us from invaders and insuring that the states play fair with each other. It has no other legal purposes.

I was particularly interested in your take on HIT for EMR. I recently became involved with a Transaction auditing service based on some tools and data mining techniques we’ve fine tuned for safety net provider and payer entities (based on mandated HIPAA transactions between responsible entities). Ours is really unobtrusive, and highly customizable. With the move to ICD 10 my perception is more of the clinical data will be buried in the billing code apparatus. Other sources of data can be added to augment what is embedded in the transactions…including EMR data, scanned docs, or manually entered post facto spreadsheet data. I tend to agree with you in your assessment of HIT,(ie that technology in many respects creates a burden not a solution for a dynamic realtime environment like the ED) but having most of my experience with other industries, didn’t previously have a first hand ‘user’ perspective. After 30 plus years in IT related technologies, I have considerable anecdotal experience with ‘excessive to the point of useless’ uses of technology, when OCCAM should shave. My point to the rambling is that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it and there are plenty of ways to collect and combine data for analytical purposes. Getting acknowledgement of that by the prevailing Management is difficult, and IT departments are the source of most resistance. In reference to the ED whiteboards, a dry erase ‘electronic’ whiteboard for one. We use to build interfaces to things like that before everything became ‘connected’.

I thought your essay was nice btw. I’m not entirely ignorant of what you speak, since I was involved with a grant to a Bio – Informatics lab at a fairly well know research institute in one of my former assignments.

All of a sudden, I don’t understand Charles Krauthammer. First, he declares Obama is the “Comeback Kid” because Dingy Harry and San Fran Nan bulldozed the remainder of the golden idols of Progressivism through the Lame Duck Session. Every magpie in the Leftist media mimicked the sound of Krauthammer’s praise for the Anointed One thus giving them a temporary air of credibility in the reflected glory of the good Dr. K. The adoration of Obama made some Moderates flutter in their cages. The Tea Party roams restlessly and they might stampede at the discordant sound emanating from one of the Right’s Scared Oracles.

Now Chuck (forgive my familiarity as Dr. K falls from his pedestal) thinks it’s a good idea to fund ObamaCare in order to show how flawed and unworkable this grandiose idea really is. That is akin to mass-producing Stanley Steamers to show that the steam engine is inefficient compared to the internal combustion engine. Building Stanley Steamers and funding ObamaCare is a total waste of capital that is already draining out of the U.S. like a sieve.

Krauthammer’s choice of proving a negative by creating the positive is illogical and counterproductive. It is the type of thinking that has lead to trillion dollar mistakes and lacks both prudency and the frugality that the times demand. The premise is that the Democrats’ attack against Republicans is negated by the program’s obvious deficiencies.

First, there is no guarantee the program’s lackings will be so evident, especially when Democrats find a way to spin it their way. Second, the strategy comes from a point of weakness, that the bureaucrats and the socialists control everything and that Republicans and conservatives have to “work around” the status quo. Pardon my sentiment but that is total B.S. The conservative logic is powerful IF brave people are willing to aggressively present it to the public.

Krauthammer’s position is the remark of an elitist who has no common touch with Main Street. One wonders whom Krauthammer aims to impress, but no one at Tea Party Rallies or April 15th demonstrations will find favor with such bilge. Elites want to impress other elites, no matter their political stripe or suit.

If this is the type of nuncio we can anticipate from the lauded Soothsayer, then we are better off focusing our energies and support for people with common sense and understanding of the real world.

Lately, the more Krauthammer talks, the more convinced I’ve become that he’s an old guard republican that is more a part of the problem than he is part of the solution.

Its time for new people with different ideas to start suggesting solutions.

Its time for the republicans to start explaining how freeing the market will help health insurance costs and start explaining how much government meddling in the current market for health insurance has screwed things up.

Hmm… I looked at his wikipedia page and couldn’t find any explicit statement of his party affiliation, but the “Ideology” section clearly associates him with conservative ideas. He seems to be branded as a “neocon” having once been solidly democrat and now being solidly considered republican. Either way, I don’t think he’s got the right mindset for what we need to do going forward. He’s too entrenched in the way things have been done before to think “outside the box” the way we need it now.

I have to agree. I’ve lost a lot of respect for Charles Krauthammer this year. He was massively wrong on changing NASA’s space policy, he was wrong about the lame duck session, and he couldn’t possibly be more wrong on funding ObamaCare if he tried. If he’s so smart, why is he so wrong so often?

The way it seem from all the way over here, is that your left wing and the media blame your conservative party for every failing of anything and everything, ever (which is exactly the same as it is here). Regardless of how much power the conservatives do or don’t have at any given point in time.

Witness the last two years where much of the media has blamed Republicans for Obama not being able to completely socialise the economy and “punish” the rich Hugo Chavez style. It’s not because it’s antithetical to everything the nation stands for, or that the Democrats like all progressives everywhere fight like cats and dogs and are entirely corrupt and self serving as individuals and so even with total control of the government still can’t get anything done. No, it’s those dastardly Republicans with their zero political power who are really running the country and ruining the “good, pure and well intentioned progressives plans”.

When Obamacare fails to deliver, it will be blamed on Republicans until armageddon, so they may as well act upon their clear and absolute mandate and come out swinging and defund it now. The left wing and media will scream like stuck pigs, the Euro trash will sneer (perhaps less now than before thanks to Greece, Ireland and the current UK university fees fiasco) but the people that matter – the people that chose to give the Republicans their vote will of course be approving.

Two things:

1. It seems Krauthhammer is a little too clever for his own good sometimes.

2. Conservatives the world over need to stop being so insecure and sensitive to what the adolescent, neurotic, vapid chattering classes squeal about them. These people are *not* the masses, nor are they in any way special – quite the contrary as we all well know.

I pray that your Republicans have success in this, so as to empower and galvanise freedom loving conservatives in smaller countries such as mine. Despite twenty years of propoganda to the contrary the US does still set the political stage for the entire western world. When conservatives do well there, they tend to do well here…

Obamacare is like a cancer. Kill it early and you survive. Let it grow and metastisize and you are dead, as our economy would be. It still amazes me that many voters fall for such programs, and then in ten or more years look for someone currently in office to blame when it goes bust. Fiscal responsibility is in very short supply in both parties, but the Dems are the worst by far!

Dr. Krauthammer has somehow forgotten that once something is passed and part of the bloated US government it can’t be killed no matter what. The only way to stop nonsense like Obamacare is to shoot it repeatedly before it starts, and make damn sure it stops moving before moving on.

I’m with Preston, Dianna and others here: Kill Obamacare by defunding it, rip out its roots, toss them on the bonfire, and then go after all the other “entitlements,” including Social Security and Medicare. If the Republicans start playing games with Obamacare, not wanting to seem “heartless,” they’ll lose all credibility, and then the only options the electorate will have will be more Democrats. Krauthammer is very disappointing in advising such a pragmatic strategy as “letting it fail.” As Preston points out, past “wars” on this, that and the other are utter failures and wastes of money, yet Republican compromises on them have only led to their perpetuity. It’s time to attack not only the welfare state, but the morality that makes it possible. Being one’s brother’s keeper only impoverishes both one and the brother and everyone else.

While I see the authors point about “fund and let fail”, that would keep some of the blame off the “republicans” because at least they tried to make the “law” work. But crushing what is left of the economy to “prove” that this law is complete garbage is dangerous. We have never seen any large liberal government program get abolished after it has been put in place. This cancer called “Health Care Reform” is the single biggest time bomb ever laid on our economy. That said it needs to be killed completely before it ever comes into full effect. If not we will fall into complete social and financial despair, that may not have the desired outcome of proving that the “liberal” mind set of the “government is here to help” is completely wrong.

With the “failure” of the system the left will say they have the answer …more “Government Control will help every one” and the people who are not awake enough to see the truth will run to the “help”.

Dr. Krauthammer has brought a knife to a gunfight. He is applying pure logic to irrational Marxist ideology. It will NOT work. This will be spun no matter what the outcome. And if we fund it, and feed the dragon, the dragon will make its home in Washington DC no matter what the outcome or evaluation in the polls. The good doctor believes that our country will make an accurate, real time evaluation that this isnt working and do away with it. RIGHT. Social Security was destined to be “broke” years ago; and when GW attempted to make a proper evaluation the left excoriated him. Now that this Marxist mentality has taken hold, how, in heaven’s name, does Dr. Krauthammer think an accurate evaluation will be made? and acted on? That is shear folly. This thing will be demigogged, and spun and lied about until it is woven into our fabric and the next generations have come to expect it. No, we have to kill this “dragon” RIGHT NOW. It must be DOA!! THat was one of the major themes behind the Nov. election. It has not changed.

Where I disagree with Dr. Krauthammer is that, the blame is meaningless. Obamacare must be defunded so that the majority of the populace that demands less government, will see that happen. If not, you’re going to dishearten a great many people and continue the meme that government cannot be reversed. If you cannot defund it, wait and try again. But to leave it fall on it’s own, which it obviously will, is too late.

I fully understand Dr. K’s reasoning. Unfortunately, it is only sound within a rational legislative body. I don’t see much in the way of rational behavior on the “other side of the isle”. We already have multiple examples of failed government intervention. I say let the states who are teetering on the brink of insolvency go under. There’s your example of failed government that will hit home very quickly.

Its not just ObamaCare that the next Congress has to de-fund.
Start with that one, surely, but let’s not forget to trim back the EPA, put PBS/NPR on a privately funded footing only, and consider any alternative to the god awful TSA.

Let’s face it, the Obama regime has provided a very target rich environment and we should do as much as is possible to deconstruct his over-reaching apparatus before it kills this United States of America.

By Dr. K’s logic The US should open the Mexican border to flood in illegal drugs, criminals, and Democrat voters thereby demonstrating the destructive effect of the policy. Oh wait, isn’t that being tried now ? Not working out so well is it Dr. K.

Kill Obamacare ASAP or it will grow like a cancer being fed by Our tax money as confiscated by the Democrats and Republicrats.

Dr. K is not such a deep thinker after all. Not unlike our empty suit for a president.

1) The people have spoken. They want Obamacare gone. They sent the Republicans to congress to make this happen. If the GOP ignores this mandate and ignores the will of the voters, they will be strung up by the electorate, as they deserve to be.

2) If Obamacare is funded and fails, the voters will ask “who let this happen?” The proximate cause won’t be Obama and the Democrats, it will be the GOP that had a chance to stop it – the GOP that will have lied to the voters when they said “send us, and we’ll put an end to this.”

Absolutely! Remember Bush #1′s famous “Read my lips, no new taxes”. Look what that got us. He failed to keep his word and here we are again. The republican (T.E.A. party) people were voted in on their promise to block O-care and if they don’t they will be gone.

lefties will blame everything on the other side– real or imagined so might as well act in the best interest of the country and allow reality to demonstrate that the lunatic libs account for little more than 8-9% of the electorate

repubs must adopt the george costanza modus operandi— “if every instinct i’ve had has been wrong then i should do the exact opposite of what my instincts tell me…”

kill it . and do it quickly. rebublicans will always be blamed……… for everything.. up to and including the weather. doesn’t matter where the true fault lies. kill it fast, then go after the rest of the bloated depts/programs

Does anyone remember when Dan Rostenkowski, then speaker of the House,passed a healthcare bill that funneled money from Medicare to fund the fight against aids and the seniors went nuts? Well they cornered Rostenkowski’s car in the streets and the “Grey Panthers” flipped it over. Needless to say the bill was repealed. Funny how that worked. Kill ObamaCare before it kills you.

One thing has been overlooked throughout the healthcare discussion: Doctors. For the past 20 years there has been concern about the quality of new applicants to medical schools; it has been in decline. With Obamacare, who will want to go to medical school? If we fund the program and then let it die a natural death, where will the docs be to repopulate the industry? We will have a huge shortage. Krauthammer is wrong. Kill dumbocare, I mean Obamacare now.

Krauthammer is going for the “Strange New Respect” award, absolutely no doubt. The winner in this case gets to touch Michelle’s hem.
I say this for reasons other than Obama Care. He has suddenly discovered the The O is brilliant, very, and never tires of praising this corrupt & dull oaf when he can, the tax deal being paramount.
For some reason noticing that you just lost 63 seats in the House and a few more in the Senate is a mark of high intelligence and keen strategic insight.
I think Charles wants badly to prove how open minded he is. Remarkable how the “incompetence” meme has been dropped. O K Charles, enough, we’ve noticed.

Starve the Beast: The Republican Plan to De-Fund the Health Care Law
House Minority Leader John Boehner is thinking, “Just you wait…”Republicans have made absolutely clear what they intend to do to block the new health care law — starve it. (Jim Angle – Fox News)

ObamaCare must be killed ASAP by defunding, court rulings, and whatever other means possible. Krauthammer is either ‘going for the Strange New Respect’ award or is simply way too clever by half. The Dems will scream and whinge whatever the GOP does, so man up and respect the groundswell that gave you 63 new seats in the House. And hope the Dems are crazy enough to kill the filibuster so that the Dems 52 seats will be converted in 2012 to the GOP’s 52 seats.

The Republicans have played patty-cake with the Dems, and the Dems have screamed and shouted anyway. Slap them down hard, and get their crazy left to commit itself to violence—funny how that Panama City Media Matters guy Duke just had his affiliation disappear after he was shot dead screaming about class warfare. The media is the enemy, Krauthammer, and if you defect like Frum and Sullivan and Huffington, it just shows your true colors. You want that media buzz and adulation.

I have stated in numerous forums here that the Tenth Amendment use by the states to nullify this bill is the fastest and easiest way to stop this regardless of what the Supreme Court of the United States does!

The state legislature through the house and senate with the signature of the Governor of any state can nullify the law and make it unenforceable.

Texas has language that goes further that it will imprison any agent that tries to enforce such an invalid law subject to imprisonment of 5 years and a fine on top of that!

I like Dr. Krauthammer. I would vote for him for president. But not on this platform. Much of the money Congress funds for ObamaCare, if they choose to do so, will wind up in the coffers of Democrat politicians…. enabling them to win more political influence. Only the mega-corporations that support it will be the recipients of the largess. The Dr. should know this. Because of Democrat entitlement programs passed already, we are on a train heading for a wreck. Perhaps he thinks it will bring the wreck about sooner, and also the hard business of recovery. Democrat ideas are almost always bad… and should be opposed consistently… all the time.

Dr. Krauthammer is p.o’d – he can’t get over the fact that Sarah Palin is smarter than he is.

Palin had the sagacity to call Obamacare out on its “death panels,” two true words that, in the full measure of their truth, sparked mass opposition to the bill all across the nation. Dr. Krauthammer, ever and always disparaging of Sarah Palin, lost no time knocking her right away on it.

Rather than own up to the fact that Sarah Palin has proven herself just as intelligent as he is, if not more so, and even more influential in fact, he’s now losing it a little, as this latest offering shows.

Defunding Obamcare should be done simultaneously with proposals which Obamacare hasn’t addressed. These include Tort reform, buying insurance across state lines and all the other lapses that Obamacare avoided addressing.

Message from a Tea Party member to GOP: DO NOT FAIL to defund Obamacare. To hell with all who worry about the approval of leftists, their disapproval is a badge of honor. I’ve had it with cowards who worry what they think; their policies are murderously destructive and must be stopped.

Most of you get it. CK is a great mind, but to him this is all a game. A mental exercise, if you will. That is the trouble with politicians. They think the back and forth is like a football game where in the end they all shake hands. Of course it isn’t. At times it can be a war where people, sometimes everyone, can get killed.

This time this issue is more a war than a game. Once rooted and rotted into our society, Obamacare will do more damage to this nation than the Great Society (that was targeted at one segment of our society Obamacare will attach itself to all of our society).

In this case CK, who I think is brilliant and love watching him dismember the likes of Juan Williams- who BTW isn’t as liberal since his firing- and the other liberals on FOX, is off base.

A bad idea on its face needs no more evidence of being bad before it should be killed off. That’s a silly intellectual theory.

Having watched and listened to the entire thing, I really came away with a completely, wholly, totally …different take on what was being said and proferred here.

First, let’s quit slamming people on the same side of the fence who are exploring the BEST ways to thwart the leftist takeover of this land of ours. Sometimes you do what I call a “brain dump”, in which there is a safety zone for throwing out into the arena an idea that is outside the box, it allows us to work through complex situations and spot pitfalls, leg snares and land mines set, that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Second, CK is NOT “WRONG”! It is absolutely imperative that the most damage inflicted upon the impending disaster that is Obamacare, come from hearings that shine a spotlight on the inanity and insanity cocktail of government ham-fisted rule over the marketplace, the officious intermeddling and mountains of regulations and bureaucratic hacks to enforce them and the stealth pocket and purse robbing attendant to it all. This train wreck will speed along looking to crash into the economy, and one brilliant way to expose the danger, is to feed it more coal. Make it burn more brightly. Show people EXACTLY what is inside this monstrosity.

NOBODY disagrees with that, certainly nobody with a firing synapse.

Third, if you think that defunding is a foregone conclusion just because the House now has a Republican majority, you are going to be sorely disappointed. It doesn’t work that way. In the meantime, if you try to defund first…without exposing all the crapology that exists in this socialist pipe dream…the media will frame the argument and POTENTIALLY WIN THE ARGUMENT, because you moved too soon.

Now, understand…I want to kill this thing fully and completely. If I thought that defunding it would rip off its ugly head and it would not appear a day later with a hockey mask and a butcher knife…I would be all for it.

But this is a chess game and any fool who rushes his pieces into play without thinking several moves ahead is going to find himself losing time and time and time again.

Let’s play this with a little more savvy than that. If we come to the conclusion AFTER we have examined the landscape that defunding is the better option, I’m all for it. But not before.

AND…let’s allow for some different examinations of the chessboard without devolving into childish namecalling and slanders against some of our best thinkers and warriors against rampant, unchecked leftism.

please step back a bit. you are aware that you just called a lot of people here idiots.

yes one needs to point out the short comings and follies of the obamacare bill. …have you made many any inroads with the MSM. a large portion of america is not listening to the same sources you and I are.

history shows that the further on into the program you get the less chance there is to stop or turn it around. that is what people here are saying and I agree with them …not charles. charles is brilliant but that doesn’t make him correct. (I also dislike that he is afraid of the islam issue).

sooner or later you will see that compromise is what got the USA into the pickle it is in.

I call them as I see them. CK was examining the chessboard and came away feeling that moving blindly forward was potentially more harmful to the cause.

That’s not apostasy, it’s critical thinking. My post was in agreement with doing exactly what he did, not necessarily about coming to the same conclusion. It is imperative to understand the difference. I also think it’s counterproductive to trash him for having done so. We can come to a different conclusion without pissing in our own cornflakes.

So, you are willing to take the risk that once implemented ObamaCare will be impossible to repeal, and near impossible to change, just as other entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare, welfare, Medicaid, etc.? I agree with most of the other posters. Fight ObamaCare before it starts.

I’m not willing to risk losing the narrative as a whole because we rushed in blindly and gave the Democrats a huge political win.

I am for examining the chessboard and figuring out what is likely to get passed, what we can realistically accomplish and what will crush rampant, unchecked, leftism and save us from having it tear down this land of ours.

I want to examine arguments a little more fully, before going off half-cocked, slamming into futility and frustration because we weren’t willing to at least listen to a different idea from our own side.

What’s half-cocked? The reasons for defunding now are very simple and have been gone over time and time again already. They boil down to this: the bill won’t go any further for now, and pros and cons about the bill’s ultimate fate can be discussed without a race against time.

Seems to me Krauthammer’s the one going off half-cocked on this, just like he went went about half-cocked bashing Sarah Palin, who in fact has proven to be more prescient and a whole lot wiser on this issue than he has ever been.

I tend to agree with you. One of the first things that should have become apparent during open enrollment this fall, was that to add a <26 year old emancipated child to your insurance , you will pay, and dearly. Second when you opt not to do it, that same child, formerly left leaning, may actually change his attitude towards the 'regime', when told he's going to be compelled to buy his own insurance…and wait til he/she sees the price tag if said child works for a small business (given that they aren't already aware).

Meanwhile, when section 8, heap,welfare or unemployed peers start getting things for free, a new class of disenfranchised youth will arise (the ones with a work ethic). On the other hand, if these same kids are given a free ride by their parents, they won't learn a thing.

Then we get into things like the unspoken goal of reducing the Medicare cost ratio (to HC cost of 20 somethings) from 10:1 to 3:1. So either the cost of care for Medicare recipients is cut dramatically, or the price tag for 20 somethings is raised dramatically, but likely a combination of the two. What of Malthus? This really is a Brave New World.

I think it changed the entire landscape of what should be the conversation…and yet, it has been aggressively ignored.

As for the folks here and the argument for defunding…I get it. I’m for it…but, I don’t think people understand how this works. It is likely to not give them what they think it does, and they are going to be extremely disappointed. We should certainly bring it up for vote…but MORE IMPORTANTLY…we should have a Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor and Chris Christie and Mitch McConnell “pay it forward” in the open air.

That is, we say…ok, let’s take a look at what they DID NOT TELL US. Here is what we have found hidden inside this. Have the CBO do a full report using certain critical facts and show what happens.

There are at least two other bills that had elements of Obama care within them…one is the stimulus bill and the other was the FMAP extension. For all we know there may be more. The way they write bills these days, I’m not sure how you starve the beast.

“… This train wreck will speed along looking to crash into the economy, and one brilliant way to expose the danger, is to feed it more coal. Make it burn more brightly. Show people EXACTLY what is inside this monstrosity.”

We don’t have to GO through a train wreck to understand what a train wreck is. Show a picture of a wrecked train to a class of 8th graders and odds are that more than half will recognize what it means. I, for one, have no more masochistic tendencies to be flogged by a president and government who tell me that he has “gotten the car out of the ditch” when, in reality, he probably has never even changed a tire on a car.

By all means, have hearings. Bring the darkness of 2,000 pages of bilge into the light. There is no doubt that the law making process was perverted by San Fran Nan (have to pass the bill to know what is in it.. that’s a pig’s eye). But there is no reason to write one check to fund this corrupt morass.

If handled correctly, the reasons for de-funding will be blatantly apparent to the general public. It has to be prosecuted with the same verve of a murder trial and has to sustain the decision beyond a reasonable doubt (which shouldn’t be hard because the American people have more than a reasonable doubt even though the surface has only been skimmed).

The Left will scream “witch hunt” but if the hearings focus on the issues and features of the passed legislation then their protests will sound lame. Obviously the process of passing this bill was filthy but pointing fingers at dirty crooks is not the point. The bill must die in committee on every request for funding. The Administration can’t justify it without tipping their hand about their motives and will expose their lies and half truths. Let them indict themselves, it is not necessary to push them.

Sorry, CK IS WRONG. You don’t fund this creature into being with the intent of killing it. To pick up your analogy of chess playing, what is the last move? Where is checkmate? Both you and Chuck need to think this through to the end.

This deal has to unwind before money exchanges hands because once commerce begins then the new process becomes “business as usual”. As H.R. “Bob” Halderman said “once you squeeze the toothpaste out of the tube, it’s hard to get it back in”.

This ObamaCare is business at the least usual. Even paying lip service to Krauthammer’s idea is foolhardy.

Why in the world would anyone want to keep funding Obamacare if they agree it is a bad idea. The left will never agree that it didn’t work no matter how much worse healthcare becomes. Once a government program is in place it becomes so embedded that it is almost impossible to kill.

Obamacare is fundamentally different because Democrats stupidly started funding it immediately but the main “benefits” don’t kick in until years later. We now have an historic opportunity to kill Obamacare before it gets too big. It would be foolhardy to squander it.

Like many of the people who write for this site, Krauthammer is a neo-con. Which is to say his sympathies are with an ever enlarging government sphere. His only problem with the lefty Democrats is that they’ve gone soft on defense. But social spending and socialized medicine?..bring ‘em on!

An inferior health care plan that no one wants and CANNOT afford to pay. The threat to jail and/or fine those who don’t purchase the government enforced plan.

Massive spending as if there is no tomorrow. Massive borrowing. The Massive giving away of Billions of dollars every year to other countries, including the oil-wealthy Middle East, Hamas-controlled Gaza and the Palestinian Authority Muslim terrorist organization who fill their war chests, build mansions and laugh all the way to the bank with free infidel money.

Massive debt. The massive printing of paper money. There is no question that the total DESTRUCTION of America’s economy is planned. The results will be horrifying. In the once wealthy and great nation of America, millions of Americans will become destitute, hungry and homeless with no money or resources to help them.

May 14 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.

“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”

Someone needs to inform Charles that THE USA IS BROKE!!!!! How are we going to pay for this scam when we can’t even afford our interest payments to CHINA???? Has the entire country gone off the deep end?? Are we so infatuated with American Idol and the other ridiculous reality television that we can’t take 5 minutes to find out how big of a mess our government has made???

Let me get this straight. We’re going to be “gifted” with a health care plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don’t, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn’t read it but exempts themselves from it, signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that’s broke. What the hell could possibly go wrong?

Let obamacare be funded. It will bankrupt state after state till the American people revolt, but please revolt peaceably or obama will just put America under marshal law. They can not force you to buy anything you do not want. Just look at all the uninsured drivers on our roads, where drivers are required to buy auto insurance to be able to drive. Obamacare will defund it`s self because we do not have the money to run obamacare. Working Americans can not and should not be expected to give away our hard earned money!

Krauthammer is not, and has never been, a conservative. He is a gentleman, he is not insane, and he has left the liberal plantation; we are so starved for a morsel of truth we do not care to see when a man has not entirely abandoned his first opinions.

His is an entirely loosing strategy. For conservatives. It is exactly the means by which we have moved ever leftward for eighty years. Neo-cons are far greater threats to conservatism than hard leftists.

As I said before O-Care got Barry Soetero’s signature; “They’ll funnel money from this legislation to their favorite supporters, and this money will ‘disappear’ and never be recovered”.
The Democrat Party knew it was a sham, but pushed it through anyway, since, they knew the money collected before it could be shut down, would fatten their coffers.
This seems to be the basis of all Democrat Legislation.

Nate, who is not given medical services now? When and if they get a single payer system it can not work. Why should someone who is working hard get the same as the one who does not work. Why is congress,muslims,unions and other groups getting an exemption from obamacare?

Nate: “Healthcare is a human right. The sooner you folks in this echo-chamber understand that fact, the sooner this country will begin to regain its place as the preeminent leader in the Western World.
Healthcare is not a “God-given” right. But a better, modern, and thoroughly reasonable conclusion that eventually all nations will recognize.”

Woah, there little fella. First, this is a blog comments section not an echo chamber. The claim that it is an echo chamber is clearly as false as your assertion about health care being a right.

You say that anything that socialists call a right is a right. Is that right? If nitwits like Pelosi and Reid say all workers, legal and illegal, have a right to a new green automobile each year so they can get to work, then that becomes a modern right that all nations will eventually recognize? So this is the genius thinking of the libruls I’ve heard so much about. Go sell this nonsense to Kos and Muffington. They will buy it immediately, and you’ll become a statist hero and famous like the great Assange.

The blatherings of the likes of Nate are comical. What does “Healthcare is a Human right mean”? Does it imply free HC? Does it imply equal access to HC? Does it imply universal availability of HC? Does it imply immediate access to HC? Does it imply excellent quality of HC? Does it imply equality of outcomes in delivery of HC? The socialist utopia never sets any realistic parameters around their ideals. In the Obama world we best learn to take care of ourselves. Of course we could catch up to Sweden: